Pages

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Image and Description from Amazon: When Evelyn Morgan walked into the village bookstore, she didn’t know
she would meet the love of her life. When Brendan Thorne handed her a
medieval romance, he didn’t know it would change the course of his
future. It was almost as if they were the cursed lovers in the old book
itself . . .The Thorn and the Blossom is a remarkable
literary artifact: You can open the book in either direction to decide
whether you’ll first read Brendan’s, or Evelyn’s account of the
mysterious love affair. Choose a side, read it like a regular novel—and
when you get to the end, you’ll find yourself at a whole new beginning.

It's only 82 pages, but I don't care. It looks gorgeous and something right up my alley.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

So it's been quite a while since I've updated. I feel bad about that. I still am not sure what I want to do with this blog. I did jot down some ideas recently, so I hope to be updating here a bit more often. I've also bought many books since mid-May that I hope to talk about at some point. However, to get back in the swing of things, I thought I would share my Borders haul from a couple of weeks ago. My honey and I also went shopping today - apparently I couldn't resist the final week of discounts - and I'll be sharing that haul next week.

So without further ado, let the insanity commence.

Total books bought in two days, including about 5 blank journals: 78 (I didn't include my boyfriend's portion of the haul)
Total money saved: $560.07 (wow!)
Room to store these tomes: Working on it! An IKEA trip will be in order soon.
The complete and utter giddiness factor of buying so many books at once: PRICELESS!

Here's the first pile of YA/middle grade books. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to find quite a few titles that I've been wanting or have heard of and thought were cool. I actually started to read Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness series, so getting Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen was a no-brainer. I'm really looking forward to reading the Robin McKinley books in this pile. 1. Trickster's Queen Tamora Pierce2. Trickster' Choice Tamora Pierce3. Dark Lord of Derkholm Diana Wynn Jones4. The Outlaws of Sherwood Robin McKinley5. The Door in the Hedge Robin McKinley6. The Blue Sword Robin McKinley7. The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice 1) John Flanagan8. The Penderwicks Jeanne Birdsall (looks like a cute series)9. Chains Laurie Halse Anderson (I thought Speak was excellent, so had to give this one a try)10. Here, There Be Dragons (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica) James A. Owen

The second pile of YA/middle-grade books. Tamora Pierce is at the top again with her latest book of short stories set in the world of Tortall (the setting for the Alanna books).

17. Tortall and Other Lands Tamora Pierce18. The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2) Rick Riordan I thought that this was the first one, so I will have to get it from Amazon at some point. I read the first book in the Percy Jackson series and liked it, so I thought I might as well get this one as well.19. Eona Alison Goodman Need to get Eon. Gorgeous covers and I believe these books are inspired by Mulan (not Disney).20. Vixen (The Flappers #1) Jillian Larkin. The second one is out now.21. Firelight Sophie Jordan Another beautiful cover. A shapeshifting dragon sounds right up my alley. Vanish, the second novel is also out now.22. Chime Franny Billingsley Don't remember what this one is about, but have see others talk about it on their blogs.23. Mistwood Leah Cypess A signed copy!24. Nightspell Leah Cypess Sequel to the above. OMG, my cover love knows no bounds.25. Unearthly Cynthia Hand I've been wanting this one for a while now.26. Sapphique Catherine Fisher I do need to get Incarceron, since there wasn't a copy to be had in Borders.

For under three bucks each, I couldn't resist these fantasy paperbacks! Apparently, I managed to find books in this section that are parts of series that I needed to start collecting, or to round out my collection.

I was going to get the following Parasol Protectorate books on my Nook, but I would have spent more. I'm not overly fond of the covers, but I do want to read more books in the Steampunk genre.27. Souless Gail Carriger28. Changeless Gail Carriger29. Blameless Gail Carriger

I started to read the Seven Waters books a while back and now that I own all the books thus far, I plan on reading everything straight through, hopefully by the end of the year. 30. Heir to Seven Waters Juliet Marillier31. Heart's Blood Juliet Marillier32. Blade of Fortriu Juliet Marillier33. The Well of Shades Juliet Marillier

40. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Katherine Howe. My boyfriend has this book. He read it and enjoyed it. I might be giving this one away but I'm not sure yet.41. The Enchantress of Florence Salman Rushdie I'm on a mission to collect and read all of Rushdie's works. This work has a beautiful cover.42. Angel Time Anne Rice If it wasn't already discounted, I might not have bothered. I was a huge Anne Rice fan in college - even went to New Orleans for one of her Halloween Balls, The Memnoch Ball - and I haven't really read her books in years. I do have a story about a book signing I went to that I may tell later. Really sweet lady. 43. Juliet Ann Fortier I do like this cover but I would have preferred the soft cover. Then again, I paid for a hardcover what the softbound would have cost, so I think I win.44. Tales of the North Jack London When I start getting into reading classic literature more heavily, London is one of the authors I would like to read.45. The Way of Kings Brandon Sanderson Apparently he is following in the footsteps of Robert Jordan. Sanderson is not only completing Jordan's Wheel of Time novels he has started his own lengthy series. Brandon you are not allowed to die. Neither is George R.R. Martin! The end papers of this book are so, WOW! The top images kind of look like the Kabbalistic tree of life, if it had more sephiroth. (There I go getting all esoteric on you. Wink).

Inside the front cover

Inside the back cover.

46. The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood
Also on a mission to collect and read all of her works. I'm excited that she will be doing a reading at my college next month. My co-worker and I plan on going!47. Possession A.S. Byatt Yep, collecting her works as well! I have a stunning copy of this book from Folio Society but couldn't resist this one. It's the cover that I have wanted in paperback. I made the mistake of buying the one with the movie version a while back and yeah, I'm not a movie version cover person. 48. Penelope's Daughter Laurel Corona Pretty much the cover and that it is about the Odyssey made me buy this book. Who needs reasons, really?49. Arcadia Falls Carol Goodman50. The Lace Reader Brunonia Barry51. Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel I really would like to sink my teeth into British History, particularly the history of the Royals. I believe this author won the Orange Prize for this work and well, another one of my goals is to read Orange Prize novels.

Close-ups of these gorgeous covers. Why? Well another one of my favorite things is Pre-Raphaelite art. The left cover is a painting by John William Waterhouse called "Psyche Entering Cupid's Garden" 1903 and the right cover is "The Beguiling of Merlin" by Edward Burne-Jones. Waterhouse wasn't part of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, however he does tend to get lumped in with them. If you want to find out more about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, my friend Grace is blog-mistress of The Beautiful Necessity, where she shares wonderful tid-bits and gems of information about the PRB and anything PRB-related.

52. The Guild by Felicia Day and Jim Rugg. I love MMO RPG's, particularly World of Warcraft. If you do too, then you will understand why I purchased this.

53. Good Masters, Sweet Ladies Laura Amy Schlitz In the post before this, I had made a list of books that I was going to read for the Award Winning Reads challenge held by Ashley at Basically Amazing
over the summer. Unfortunately, I didn't really put a dent in the challenge, but this was one of the books that was on my list, so I hope to read it as well as the rest of the books on my list, at some point!

And FINALLY!

54. The Unwritten Volume 2: Inside Man I read the first one and liked it. In short it's "Harry Potter" in the adult world.

Well if you made it through all of that, I commend you! I'll be back again soon with another book haul and hopefully, some intelligent posts having to do with what I am reading.

About Me

A born and bred city girl who yearns for a quiet bungalow surrounded by trees and gardens. I've been inspired by the many book blogs that I've come across this year and decided it was time for one of my own.